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Doctor John Watson
Dr Watson's first name is mentioned on only three occasions. Part one of the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, is subtitled Being a reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.[4] In "The Problem of Thor Bridge", Watson says that his dispatch box is labeled 'John H. Watson, M.D'.[5] Mary (Watson's wife) calls him 'James' in "The Man with the Twisted Lip"; Dorothy L. Sayers speculates that Mary may be referring to his middle name Hamish (an Anglicisation of Sheumais, the vocative form of the Scottish Gaelic for James, Seumas), though Doyle himself never addresses this beyond including the initial.[6] In A Study in Scarlet, Watson, as the narrator, recounts his earlier life before meeting Holmes. It is established that Watson received his medical degree from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, the University of London in 1878, and had subsequently gone on to train at Netley as a surgeon in the British Army. If one assumes that Watson entered the University of London at around the age of twenty-five, he would have been born around 1853. He joined British forces in India, saw service in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, was wounded at the Battle of Maiwand (July 1880) by a Jezail bullet in the shoulder,[Note 1] suffered enteric fever and was sent back to England on the troopship [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Orontes_%281862%29 HMS Orontes] following his recovery.[7] In 1881, Watson runs into an old friend of his named Stamford, who tells him that an acquaintance of his, Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat in 221B Baker Street. Watson meets Holmes for the first time at a local hospital, where Holmes is conducting a scientific experiment. Holmes and Watson list their faults to each other to determine whether they can live together. The first of Watson's "confessions" is that he keeps a bull pup. Concluding that they are compatible, they subsequently move into the flat. When Watson notices multiple guests frequenting the flat, Holmes reveals that he is a "consulting detective" and that the guests are his clients.[8] By this time, Watson has already become impressed with Holmes' knowledge of chemistry and sensational literature. He witnesses Holmes' amazing skills at deduction as they embark on their first case together, concerning a series of murders related to Mormon intrigue. When the case is solved, Watson is angered that Holmes is not given any credit for it by the press. When Holmes refuses to record and publish his account of the adventure, Watson endeavours to do so himself. In time, Holmes and Watson become close friends. In The Sign of the Four, John Watson becomes engaged to Mary Morstan, a governess. In "The Adventure of the Empty House", statements by Watson imply that Morstan has died by the time Holmes returns after faking his death; that fact is confirmed when Watson moves back to Baker Street to share lodgings with Holmes, as he had done as a bachelor. Conan Doyle made mention of a second wife in "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" and "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier", but this wife was never named, described, or explained. It was mentioned in His Last Bow that Watson was rejoining the service in London once more. Watson married a third time in Oct 1902, after "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client". At the beginning of A Study in Scarlet, Watson states he had "neither kith nor kin in England". In the Sign of the Four, it is established his father and older brother are deceased and both shared the initial 'H'. In this story, Holmes examines an old watch in Watson's possession that was formerly his father's before being inherited by his brother. Holmes estimates the watch to have a value of 50 guineas,[Note 2] so H. Watson senior was a very prosperous man if he could have afforded such an item. Holmes deduced from the watch that Watson's brother was "a man of untidy habits-very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects but threw away his chances, lived for sometime in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity and finally, taking to drink he died." Category:Characters